English for aliens?

[Ragitsu]

Hi!

 

Concerning the possibility of aliens speaking English, on a scale of one to ten ("one" being "No extraterrestrials speak English and meaningful communication between them and humans is virtually impossible." and "ten" being "Everyone speaks English and no one bats an eye; the frequently featured 'universal translator' may not even be required."), where do your science-fiction games reside?

[Scott Ruggels]

Two example’s: The first example is from a novel written by MCA Hogarth. In that novel, a member of an alien species is found drifting in a life pod, by members of the localGovernment. In the Times, she interacts with members of the local community she picks up the language, goes through several adventures, and returns to her home world with a data capsule. After further adventures, she starts teaching her friends and colleagues Standard, which is a version of English spelled phonetically and with a slightly simplified grammar. At the end of the second novel of the series, a cadre of standard speakers, is part of the delegation that is meeting a federation ship landing at their starport. I have simplified the description quite a bit to maintain relevancy, but I liked the book even with its occasional fluffiness but there was a logic and presence in the book. Worth a read.

 

 

The second example is trade. In traveler, if you want to trade with humanity, you learn Anglic. Because not many businesses, Dan to learn Varger dialects. Those that do tend to live on Vargr plurality, or majority planets, or our academics.

 

The counter example, is from the current cyberpunk red campaign, where due to a failure of robotics and a general hi mistrust of AI, the orbitals, purchase GMO Neodogs. These dogs come in a few different varieties, but they are all near human intelligence, with some limits, being that they are still mostly canines, and our bread and engineered for certain traits. As such, they cannot speak, so they can understand various languages depending on their course of learning. The orbitals themselves, often pick up a SL, to communicate when radio equipment is fried by solar radiation. It is also useful in a nightclub when there are many languages spoken, and the music is very very loud. The Neo dogs, because of their freaky squirrel or raccoon hands, are quite adept at ASL and use it to communicate with each other, without having to make any noise, they often tends to upset the humans.

[theinfn8]

I tend to lean more toward pushing language into the "narrative" realm. So unless it serves an interesting narrative for the game, I assume communication happens, whether it's some galactic basic, everyone knows a little of the language, or a universal translator. Modifying your scale, with one being hard language/communication requirements and 10 being hand-wavium everyone can communicate, probably in the 8 or 9 range.

[LoneWolf]

It depends on the campaign and the nature of the aliens.  

 

In a lot of campaigns humanity has already established relations with many different aliens.  In those cases, there is some way to communicate with alien species.  Some aliens may be incapable of understanding or using human languages, but even in those cases there is some way of communicating with them.  This is probably the most common SF campaign as it would allow player to play an alien.

 

In some campaigns the premises may be that you are establishing first contact.  That would usually mean that at the beginning of the campaign the different species are not able to understand each other and other coming that is probably a high priority.  This assumes that the alien race is interested in more than just slaughtering humans.  This type of campaign is probably the least common.

 

There are also campaigns where the aliens are incapable or unwilling to communicate with humans.  Usually in these cases the aliens have no interest in interacting with humans and either actively goes out of their way slaughter humans. or for one reason or another wish to be left alone and kill any humans they encounter but don’t otherwise interact with humans.  This is probably less common than the first scenario, but more common than the second. 

 

In any a lot of cases there will be a mixture of situations.  Even in a campaign with well-established aliens a new race could show up.  
 

[Sundog]

I tend to vary it quite a bit. I never use the whole "Universal Translator" thing, but I can accept pre-programmed translation protocol devices. I also don't buy into the "one language for humanity" concept, so those devices get a lot of workout even in human space. In a number of cases I have older or more powerful races simply demand that if humans want to do business in their sphere's they need to "learn to speak a civilized tongue."

[Scott Ruggels]

15 minutes ago, Sundog said:

I tend to vary it quite a bit. I never use the whole "Universal Translator" thing, but I can accept pre-programmed translation protocol devices. I also don't buy into the "one language for humanity" concept, so those devices get a lot of workout even in human space. In a number of cases I have older or more powerful races simply demand that if humans want to do business in their sphere's they need to "learn to speak a civilized tongue."

I’d think it might be limited to languages that make it to space, like English, Russian, and Mandarin, and everyone else will have to lump it. Even civil Aviation demand English ( Outside of Russia and China). 
 

As for learning an alien language… welp, that leaves the Americans out. 😁

[Sundog]

I generally assume English, Chinese (a unified dialect), Hindi, Spanish and Russian, with various colonies having other languages as standard, but most of the population capable in one or more of the trade tongues.

 

[tkdguy]

My near-future campaign doesn't have any aliens, so the players speak whatever languages are native to them. In a far-future spacefaring campaign, I would assume some kind of trade language would be used to allow communication between different species. If English still exists at the time, it will have evolved to something different from the English we speak today.

[Scott Ruggels]

I have had to retool my near future Solar System background to Cyberpunk Red. The group was unreceptive to Hero. However, I had a lot of the Orbital laborers using ASL as a language for when Solar flares blank the radios. You can say a lot with a gesture.  
 

 

[Duke Bushido]

It amuses me greatly that no one is using Esperanto,

 

Sorry, Harry.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

in Richard Corbin's Rowlf  Comic, the Orks speak Esperanto.

[steriaca]

In the Gundam Universal Centery timeline, it is probably assumed that most everyone on Earth and the orbital colonies speak Japanese. Of course, since this is an anime, and originally broadcasted in Japan, it was a convenient way to have communications in a near Earth space opera.

 

When broadcasted over on Cartoon Network in the United States, this was English instead. And yes, they did broadcast the original Mobile Suit Gundam...for a few episodes till 9/11 happened and a story about war wasn't quite acceptable. 

[Duke Bushido]

I know this doesn't really offer data up in which you make your decision, but for me it is entirely up to the campaign.

 

Long-established relationships between human and alien?  They will speak _something_ in common, be it English, alienese, or some tradespeak pidgin third language.

 

In such a campaign, the interaction between the two races may be so common as to make not being able to communicate the more unusual thing.

 

For the Most part, no.  Oossible problems of speaking apparatus or hearing aparatus or other things may make it difficult or impossible to lean or converse with one or more different races.  The biggest deal to me is present right here on earth, amongst humans: different cultural assumptions and references lead to entirely different ways of looking at things (not every earth language has a single word for "throw something or someone directly out of the window."  They may have the concept, but how ingrained must it be before you decide "this would be easier with a dedicated word?"  Then shadenfreude-- again: English speakers dont have a singke word for this because culturally, we pretend to feel sympathy for the victim- going so far as to emphatically express that verbally-  all the while dying of laughter on the inside, and feeling guilty about that, because we just heard everyone else tell us how their heart went out to that poor, poor man....)

 

Other issues, too:

 

English has a tendency to do a complete about face based on common usage as opposed to the actual definition.  We are living through this very thing happening to "irony" and "ironic."   Think I am wrong?  Did you know that at one point "a moot point" meant one of or the most important points being made?  It also meant "the most poignant thing."

 

What changed it?  A couol3 hundred years of sarcasm.  Remember when "ain't" weren't a word?  I bet few people remember when "weren't" used with a singular noun _was_ a word (because we'd all be at least eighty years older than we are now).

 

And all of that comes down to not just the language, and not just the whims of the culture, but the rukes goeverning the effects that are and are not allowed to happen because of the whims od the culture.

 

At least on earth, we all sort of have the shared environment and human experience to build upon.  I don't know that aliens would be able to truly speak casual conversational English or Spanish or any other earth language even with identical speaking systems.  Further, I dont know that we could speak their lanvuage, either.

 

This is actually why so many of my campaigns (that arent straight space opera) have a trade language or a common tongue, and this language is usually built scientifically- based upon concrete concepts and expanded outward.  It also has limited numbers of adverbs and adjectives, relying more on repetition and stress to indicate degree.  Kind of,  A little, a bit, some, a fair amount, yes, a good bit, considerably, quite a lot, a lot, damn right, oh yes, more than you think, with every fiber of my being-  most of thise arent even adjectives, but are all answers to "do you hate that guy or something?"  Worse, they are graduated levels of "Yes" or "this quality exists."

 

Scientifically, such a question _should_ be answered yes or no.  In our interspecies made up language, it _must_ be answered yes or no. In English, Spanish, or French, there is no such requirement- we go right straight to the commentary on our hatred.

 

In the tradespeak, the actual question must be answered as concisely as possible before expansion on the thought.  Certainly the respondenr is free to add his own colorful commentary (with reason; to keep communication clear, no more than two adjectives or adverbs may be used to describe any one noun- which helps push speakers to using inflection and stress to show degree).

 

This is because either party May be considerably less fluent or be from a species with no concept of "dragging his screaming corpulent butt with me into the first pits of Hell," but still gets an understandable answer to his question.

 

As an amteur etymologist, I love this topic, and could go on for hours about translation and communication problems based on life concepts and even longer on purposely-constructed languages, but I am pretty sure 99.972457 percent of the population finds it slightly more boring than sloth racing.

 

(See?  An alien from a planet without sloths wouldn't know if I was being wise or cracking wise, would he?)

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

4 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

As an amteur etymologist, I love this topic, and could go on for hours about translation and communication problems based on life concepts and even longer on purposely-constructed languages, but I am pretty sure 99.972457 percent of the population finds it slightly more boring than sloth racing.

 

(See?  An alien from a planet without sloths wouldn't know if I was being wise or cracking wise, would he?)

 

 

Oh I find languages and the construction of them quite interesting but difficult to master. Typical American, I don’t speak a foreign language well, but I made up a fake one for the fantasy campaign. I am just sorry I misplaced the big dictionary notebook in a move, but still have a chunk of it. It’s certainly, to me, a much more interesting subject, than real world events or sports on an RPG forum.